SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Monday that he will spearhead an independent ballot measure campaign to reform how state legislative boundaries are drawn.

The plan would put the power to redraw political lines in the hands of an independent citizens’ commission, and that it would keep its hands off congressional boundaries – a crucial move in avoiding what could have been an expensive battle with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, political observers said.

Supporters are hoping to put the measure on the November 2008 ballot.

“We’ve spent months and months negotiating this over the past several years,” Schwarzenegger said at a Capitol news conference, “and our efforts in the Legislature came up short. But, I’ve never lost hope.”

Four-year goal

Schwarzenegger said the proposal reflected his call to alter the political landscape when he arrived in Sacramento four years ago, and insisted that competitive races would result, helping to revive the public’s faith in the political system.

“We need a system with truly competitive legislative districts,” he said, “so when legislators go home, they can be held more accountable and people get results and issues they really care about.”

Schwarzenegger pledged to do “whatever it takes” to gain public approval, including traveling the state gathering signatures. Presumably, he would tap into his vast political committee fund.

Critics are skeptical that the proposal could result in more than a handful of competitive districts.

They also asserted that it would give the power to select commissioners to unqualified, randomly elected state auditors, is a disguised Republican power grab that gives more weight to Republican members than Democrats, and fails to ensure that the commission would reflect the state’s diversity.

Under the plan, the office of the state auditor would randomly select three auditors, who would screen applicants from a pool of 60 to serve on the commission. Eight of the 14 commission members would be selected randomly from the pool – with no guarantee that minorities or women would be represented. And though Democrats make up 43 percent of the state, they would comprise only 36 percent of the commission, while Republicans, who make up 34 percent of the state, also would make up 36 percent of the commission.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, who has failed to get two redistricting bills through his chamber this year, agreed that an independent commission is needed to draw lines, but questioned the fairness of the proposal.

“We have some concerns about diversity and the splitting of communities in this initiative,” he said in a statement. “I believe we need to continue to work to craft a bipartisan legislative solution, and if this initiative puts more pressure on us to do that, so much the better.”

Republicans are likely to be disappointed that the proposal won’t include congressional boundaries. But to defeat it, observers said, the two parties would need to band together with major funding from interest groups intent on maintaining the status quo.

Resistance to change

“The danger is if labor, teachers and other groups that feel they control the Legislature today don’t want to see change,” said Tony Quinn, editor of California Target Book, which analyzes legislative races. “But I don’t know if they’d raise money if members aren’t engaged.”

That could hinge on whether the proposal to loosen term limits, Proposition 93, gains passage in the Feb. 5 primary, Quinn said. If it goes down, incumbents won’t have any incentive to fight a change that wouldn’t affect most of them when redistricting begins in 2011.

Proponents of the redistricting proposal are trying to gather bipartisan good will. Along with a bevy of government watchdog groups – Common Cause of California, the League of Women Voters and AARP – the campaign has enlisted political consultants from both parties: Republican Wayne Johnson and Democrat Steve Smith.

“You’re seeing a real effort to ensure this is not partisan,” Johnson said. “You’ve never have this collection of organizations here if it were partisan. That’s what’s unique about this: It comes from the center.”

Kathay Feng, executive director for California Common Cause, said the ballot committee, California Voters First, filed the measure “only after we exhausted every opportunity to talk with” legislative leaders about producing redistricting reform. “But, honestly, after the legislative session closed and the Legislature refused to go along with calls for redistricting, we realized they no longer had any intention to come up with a compromise.”

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